


i've only seen the light twice

by anticupid16



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Carmilla watches the videos, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 15:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3941728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticupid16/pseuds/anticupid16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carmilla takes a gander at Laura's videos because she's a sappy vampire in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i've only seen the light twice

The videos were ridiculous. If Laura hadn't proven to be, well, one of those brief breaks of sun into the fog of a vampire's life, Carmilla would have considered these videos proof enough of her idiocy. She was watching them from LaFontaine's laptop (it was easier to use than Laura's computer), trying to keep the volume low. She was being rather responsible about the whole thing from covering her mouth when she had to laugh (the goop was a particularly funny moment) to avoiding making unnecessary comments to the air listening to her. She skipped some parts--namely the parts that she had been present during--but she also enjoyed skimming some of the comments. Laura had been responsive towards her followers, but also oblivious. "Oh cupcake," Carmilla whispered at a particularly...unique exchange between Laura and one of the boorish Zetas. 

Carmilla, as much as she hated the fact that she had done it, stayed up until the sun rose that night watching those videos of Laura, reminding herself of the path they had taken that had deposited them squarely at the bottom of the mountain they had climbed together. Carmilla didn't dream; she hadn't done so in a while. 

"Carm...illa?" Perry had flinched back, but now Carmilla could see the mug in her hands. "I thought you should have something to drink." Carmilla just turned over and pressed her face into the bright yellow pillow she'd stolen. Well, it wasn't so much stealing as it was taking possession. Laura didn't need it, after all. 

Perry stopped visiting to bring her blood, and LaFontaine began. For some reason, they all seemed to think that LaFontaine would get through, but all that meant was that they would use the laptop sitting at the desk. At least they knew better than to mess up Laura's bed, still ready and waiting. Carmilla hid under her covers during LaFontaine's visits, and pretended not to notice that there were now at least a dozen cups of blood sitting around the room. They were in the fridge, too, she noticed when she took the last of the grape sodas. The last... It was almost enough to get her out of the room, but then her hand had paused on the door knob. Carmilla didn't even like the soda. It was too sweet and artificial, and nothing like the taste of Laura's lips. What would be the point? The point would have been for her. 

LaFontaine asked her one afternoon if they could have their laptop back. At first, Carmilla decided she'd say no, that she needed it. Then LaFontaine told her that Laura's father had ended her video account. The videos were gone, anyways. So the laptop was gone, as well, and Carmilla did nothing else. At night she would sit on her bed, letting the darkness seep into the room around her. It reached around her shoulders to hug her, her waist to claim her, her legs to trap her. It constricted her throat so she could only breath the darkness in, and nothing was left of the light in her. The light that had shone only twice, and very, very brightly. 

LaFontaine stopped visiting. There was a veritable blood bank in the room, and the scent wafted over Carmilla's nose until she broke and scrabbled for the nearest glass. She stained Laura's yellow pillow in her haste, and after she had gulped the whole thing down she tried to scrub the blood out. The stain turned orange, and it was worse. 

Carmilla had tried flipping the pillow over, but the stain was there behind her eyes. It was the stain that had been on Laura's tank top, the exact same color. She had no idea how, since Laura had been wearing blue. Carmilla liked blue on Laura, though she usually hated the color. How could red and blue make the same color as red and yellow? It didn't make sense, so Carmilla tossed Laura's pillow to the floor, and kicked it under her bed. It didn't smell like Laura anymore, anyways. 

Danny tried once. She burst through the door late one afternoon to find Carmilla sitting in the middle of the floor, holding the wooden spatula that she'd tripped on that morning. She'd woken up from a dreamless night of darkness and had been unable to stop herself from guzzling two more glasses of blood before she'd stepped back in horror, right onto the spatula. She couldn't remember why it was on the floor, but she was sure it was one of the things she'd thrown about tearing the room up the Day After. Danny didn't say anything. She just looked at the spatula and left. Carmilla threw the spatula under her bed next, because it was a ridiculous piece of wood with no sentimental meaning whatsoever. 

Laura's things were gone the next day when she woke up. At first, she was frantic. She ran her fingers down the mattress with enough force that it burst, the innards pressing forward through the tears and confirming that Laura's sheets, her bed cover, were gone. Next, she nearly ripped the closet door off its hinges and there was nothing hanging, only her own clothes haphazardly strewn across the bottom. Laura's owl lamp was gone, her books were gone, even her computer was gone. The bear spray? Gone. The baseball bat? Gone. The only thing left was that stupid blue mug, and Carmilla suspected it was because it had blood in it. 

Carmilla was no longer a student at Silas University, the letter said. The letter could return to sender and shove itself down their throat for all she cared. The four walls that contained her were containing her for a reason. If she left... If she left, then the cold, hard world outside would be the reality. She mattered inside those four walls, where everything had started and where everything had ended. If she left she might as well be imprisoned in that coffin again: irrelevant and forgotten. 

A few nights later she dreamt again. She dreamed that Laura was lying beside her, her hair stuck against her lip annoyingly, but because her head was cushioned just right against Carmilla's arm, there was no point in waking the little creampuff. It was just a dream, though, and it was enough to make Carmilla scream. She flung all the remaining glasses of blood out the window, onto the head of an unsuspecting kid from the Glee club, who moaned up at her until she slammed the window shut again. That was the most contact she had had with the outside world since Laura's friends had stopped trying to get her to live. Carmilla had died already; their efforts were pointless. 

Carmilla pushed the wardrobe in front of the door after the second letter arrived telling her that she was to leave Silas University. She couldn't explain why she felt like she couldn't leave that room. She couldn't explain what it was she feared. Her monsters were gone, she'd made sure of that. She was the only monster left in Silas. She was the darkness waiting and watching, but at the same time the darkness was watching her. She felt it in her lungs and in her throat, waiting all the time to crawl out and consume her from the outside. It had torn her innards apart. 

She stopped getting out of bed at all. Instead, when she inevitably could sleep no more, could stare into the void of oblivion that she'd been left to no more, she would stare at the ceiling of the four walls that kept her. She wasn't caged, since she'd built the cage herself, but she was trapped. She was trapped by the knowledge that nothing could ever change what she was. She wasn't willing to have this happen a third time. Twice, now, she had seen the lightness of her death taken from her, and that was too much. 

Carmilla had no idea what had happened. Perhaps, if she'd known, she would be able to do something about it. Instead, all she knew was that Laura's dead, cold body had been lying in bed, waiting for her. She'd been out all night, stupidly, and Laura had stayed in with a cold. Carmilla had crawled into bed, realized something was wrong, and had been unable to stop it. There would be no heroic vampire crap. Laura was gone, far gone, and there was no culprit to be named. 

Instead, Carmilla allowed death to capture the one truly at fault for Laura's death. The reason Laura had come so close so many times to being destroyed. The reason Laura had ever been caught up in the world of the strange beyond the norm of Silas University. 

It took seven people to break in the door of the dorm room. Six of them wretched at the smell of the room, and the seventh had walked in with a stoic face. The thing in the second bed hardly looked human. The moment it was touched it crumbled into dust and floated to the floor. It was vacuumed up, thrown out, and forgotten.


End file.
